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The big advantage is you don't pay any long distance charges--or even any charges for time if your Internet Service Provider doesn't charge for time online. If you like, you can talk to someone across the world for hours for the price of a local call. On the other hand, the Internet treats the digitized voice signals like any other data, so some packets may take longer to get there than others. You can experience a noticeable delay if pathways are busy. There's no method yet for signaling someone on the other end that you want to call them unless they're already online and waiting for your call. The voice quality tends to be more like CB radio than a standard telephone. And finally, you have to get a lot of use out of it to justify replacing a $10 telephone instrument with several thousand dollars worth of computer, software, and multimedia hardware.
